


Haunting Me Across Time

by DarkmoonBoar



Series: Main verse/DS3 Adrian [2]
Category: Dark Souls (Video Games), Dark Souls III
Genre: A non-love triangle love triangle, But hopefully not in a narmy way, Canon-Typical Violence, Dealing with insecurities like an adult, Don't read this expecting smut soon, Fix-It of Sorts, Gayngst, Has a good ending I swear, Jealousy, Like maybe even tertiary, Lots of pain along the way, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Polyamory, Rated for Future Content, Self-Indulgent, Smut is secondary to plot, The grimmer and darker version of one of my fics, Time Fuckery, Time is convoluted, gay angst, plot with some porn, sorta canon compliant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2020-06-25 18:02:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19750933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkmoonBoar/pseuds/DarkmoonBoar
Summary: A longer retelling/reimagining of my first long Dark Souls 3 fic starring my OC, Adrian of Vinheim. He's far more fleshed out as a character here, mostly due to RPing with him on tumblr before I quit (and my RPs have definitely influenced my work here). Also, I make it far more explicit he's a Blade of the Darkmoon here. (In fact, it's pretty pertinent to the plot!)Once a clandestine scholar of Vinheim and exiled once he became Undead, Adrian finds himself reawakened by the bell tower as the fire fades. He falls in love with another outcast, and before he can confess his feelings, they vanish, seemingly without a trace.And so he treks across time and place, searching for him, only for his soul to be crushed. With his illusions gone, he heads to Irithyll under the illusion (delusion?) that it is his promised land, where he can start anew...





	1. Risen

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Bless Your Pain](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7260241) by [DarkmoonBoar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkmoonBoar/pseuds/DarkmoonBoar). 



> Hopefully this isn't too rough because I suck at proof-reading myself. Whoo I don't have a beta reader!
> 
> Also, I'll be updating this in tandem with my Bloodborne fic starring basically an AU of Adrian. It'll be one chapter of that, one chapter of this.
> 
> FIRST CHAPTER OF PART ONE

_Ding dong_ .

Long dormant lungs suddenly filled with air as the bells in the tower tolled (for whom?). Adrian opened his eyes, feeling dryer than the desert, to the inky darkness of the coffin he laid in. Everything ached, especially his chest as it filled with its first breaths in… gods know how long. Undead normally didn’t stay dead for long… unless they failed to link the First Flame, as he had. And there would be no way of knowing just how far the world had marched on until he removed the lid of the sarcophagus he had been stuffed in post mortem.

Even through the stone, the bells pealed loudly like thunder through his bones. Its notes echoed dully in the increasingly warm and claustrophobic coffin. As the stone dug further into his spine and possibly years, even decades of complete inactivity began to catch up with him, Adrian managed to shove off the lid, and instantly regret it as all the light nearly blinded him and caused his eyes to sear with pain. Squinting his hooded dark eyes, he blocked out the sun with his long, slender hands and arms.

 _Heh_ , he thought to himself grimly, focusing his eyes on the grays of his tattered leather armor, _It’s like the first time I died all over again._ And really, it was, given this time he had at least been shoved into a coffin. Maybe not _buried_ , but an attempt was made to give his body some modicum of respect and rest. And gods, did his body smart and radiate with all sorts of aches and pains like his first death and feel stiff. Given his prior experiences, it would take a good couple hours for his body to be completely up to speed, but until then, he could at least try to get his bearings and do a little bit of stretching.

Slowly, he rose to his feet, cursing as the rush of blood down from his head almost blacked out his vision entirely. At the side of his hips, he could feel the weight of his forgotten estoc and his old, trusty wooden staff back when he still tread the grounds of Vinheim Dragon School.

Once his eyes finally adjusted, Adrian very much realized he stood in a graveyard, which, really, didn’t strike him as that strange. And boy, did it look _decrepit_. While most standing cemeteries would have a cobblestone path leading through the graves, time had eroded it away in many places, such as the dirt path in front of him leading to the main part. Some of it had simply cracked. Roots of the gnarled, lifeless looking trees surrounding his grave broke through the ground in many places. Other coffins peaked out of the ground, as if forced out. And the grass poking out of the ground where foot had long since tread appeared beige, almost gray, and dried.

Not just aged, but dead. Even the sky, a tired looking pale gray with ashen clouds, gave him no hope that the world still contained much life. He couldn’t even see birds as little v’s in the weary sky or hear their cheerful songs. Not only had his attempt at reigniting the First Flame failed, clearly no one else since then had succeeded.

Still, the bell beckoned him forward. He felt it deep in his bones, resonating even though it has stopped. It willed him to push on despite the creeping despair that seemed to shoot up from his feet til its tendrils touched his brain.

Up above, he saw the High Wall of Lothric. Adrian could recognize it anywhere.

The Unkindled prowled through the thick morning mist along the long path to the bell tower, thankful for his thick gray leathers as a breeze picked up and made the air all the colder. While the coffin had been warm, outside proved to be much different. Not far up ahead, he heard someone or something trudge through the water slowly, stopping every so often, then repeating the process. Given that it didn’t appear to be fading away, the source sounded like it walked aimlessly, or perhaps in a circle. Taking no chances with the low visibility between the harsh shadows cast by the morning sun as well as the dense fog, Adrian unsheathed his estoc with his right hard. He took care to take it out slowly so it made naught a sound.

And with the left hand, he unhooked his catalyst and waved it above his head in a fluid, back in forth motion. Light, floaty magic enveloped his dark boots. Furrowing his brow, he heard the rippling of water as he neared the origin of the noise. Now, he made no sound as he felt the bottom of his boots enter water even chillier than the air, estoc raised. Finally, he could see the outline of a gaunt, robed figure, standing in the shallow water. Given how _he_ could see them, the person must be oblivious to his presence, as he liked it.

With zero hesitation, he stalked towards them, with all the slow deliberateness of a praying mantis edging towards an unsuspecting fly. Then, he plunged the long, slender blade into their back. They crashed into the water, splashing it onto the assassin, soaking some of his leather as well as his hood. Not waiting for them to get up, Adrian jabbed it into them again, aiming for their chest.

They let out a raspy, dry cry, and after the water and fog settled, he finally identified his victim as a particularly thin and brittle Hollow in faded blue robes. Must have been terribly hollowed, given their flesh no longer looked red or pinkish; it has a striking pallid gray tinge. He cocked his head to the right as he continued to stare at the dispatched Undead. Did they know of their Hollowed state? What went on in their heads?

_Dragon’s teeth, why am I even pondering this shit?_

Rapidly shaking his head, the Unkindled snapped his attention back to his task. Pursing his rather thin lips, he swiveled his head right to look a narrowing of the crevice he stood in. The path winded around a corner to the unknown; he simply could not see the direction it turned to. On the other hand, on the left, the fog dissipated for the most part, becoming a light mist. The path eventually opened up to a cliff, though in his way he could see yet another shambling Hollow and the body of a knight crumpled in front of some sort of large cracked vessel.

Naturally, he chose to go down the left, given its visibility and brightness over the right. Right now, he didn’t feel like dealing with the unknown when he still felt somewhat disoriented. If curiosity really gnawed at him, Adrian could always peak around the corner later.

 _Splash_. The Hollow continued their shuffling around, back turned to the assassin.

The ruined stone wall on his right made him quite curious about the age of this graveyard. How many cycles had it stood? Clearly, though, the caretakers had long since gone, or simply stopped caring. And what did it look like, when it stood whole? Given its location, Lothric must have once tended to it. At least, before the civil war….

With his estoc still in hand, Adrian, fleet of foot, took care of the Hollow, dancing around its clumsy blows with a broken sword. Blood, though a meager amount, covered the glinting steel of his blade and the weathered leather he wore. Compared to what a more fully human body would produce, the raisin-like Hollows left little evidence of their life. With the Hollow on solid ground instead of water, the Unkindled could see with his own eyes they bled very little, little marring the robes and little pooling beneath on the stone. And how brightly the deep, almost black, red and the blue of the cloth stood out against the gray of the stone in the light.

Clouds began to cover up the sun, leaving little bits of rays to peak out between them.

As he finally strode over to the cliff side that took a turn to the left and up after some stairs, Adrian did his best to avoid looking over the side. Just looking at the mountains on the horizon resulted in him feeling a tinge of vertigo. And he found it quite hard to, between his unusual height and close proximity to the edge. Why, all it would take for him to go careening over the edge would be to clumsily trip over himself, or lose balance going up the slight hill…

The idea sent shivers down his spine.

Much to his surprise, and relief, on the crest of the hill he saw the hilt of a coiled sword and the orange flick of flames that marked a bonfire. Just the sight of that little sword stuck in the mound of ash and bones with fire licking its coppery length further ignited his desire to get out of this wasteland. With gravel shifting beneath his boots and sliding towards oblivion, he all but glided up to it. Warm brown eyes fixated on the blaze as he carefully sat in front of it, crossing his long legs.

And looking up and forward through the fire, he could see an area with a multitude large cobblestone brick arches, more intact than the ruins he previously tread through. From it lead a path upwards, to the right, to a grand stone building with the bell tower that awoke him attached.

No doubt, it could be none other than the Firelink Shrine he remembered from years(?) ago. But could the cemetery really have fallen in such great disrepair in that time..?

Regardless, Adrian would have his answers there.

Pushing himself off the ground, the Vinheim assassin brushed off the dust and ash off his backside, and with deeply scrunched brows, set off in that direction, even more determined than before.


	2. Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adrian faces the Iudex Gundyr and makes his way to Firelink Shrine

Under a sky begging for the end of the world, Adrian painted the ashen gray of the craggy, overgrown landscape of the cemetery in deep, almost black, crimson. The Hollows proved to be laughable as a threat, even in groups, even with their mad flailing, and even with how utterly out of practice the assassin felt. Not all that surprising; the Hollows looked like long desiccated corpses, after all, indicating how they held onto some semblance of Humanity by the smallest thread. He had even heard, some time ago, that Undead that had been brought back over and over again without holding onto Humanity eventually become so weak and broken they barely have the will to move.

Virtually every Undead, with the seeming exception of the Londor Hollows, feared losing themselves to Hollowing. It wasn’t _just_ death that caused it because there were many Hollow-looking Undead that still had all their wits. Regardless, Hollowing always manifested first with the loss of memories, starting with the least significant. Eventually, an Undead going Hollow even lost their sense of self, becoming little more than a human-shaped ghoul with no higher thought processes than to kill for souls and perhaps Humanity.

It wasn’t widely known if it was possible for an Undead to come back from that point and it was generally accepted it would be the fate of most. The thought of mindlessly roaming the land, unable to remember his name or purpose and unable to truly die, made Adrian shudder. Perhaps this provided the reason for so many Undead to cling to the notion that relighting the First Flame would cure their affliction. It wasn’t why _he_ had attempted to do so, and his resulting failure to become Kindle for it made him doubtful.

He stood in a bashful ray of sunlight that cast down a precarious cliff side path to a gateway. Estoc in one hand, wooden catalyst in the other, the exiled clandestine sorcerer made quick work of the Hollows patrolling the area. Stepping backwards, he dodged the first cloaked Undead that hurled itself towards him with its broken sword raised, before stabbing it in the back. Then, he gave the Hollow a good, solid kick to the front, one that caused it to drop its weapon and gasp breathlessly. It shrieked as it fell off the side, its voice hoarse and inhuman as its death cries echoed off the mountains. But he had little time to take a breather, for ahead he watched a Hollow pull back a lathe on the crossbow it held.

He had just enough time to roll forward to avoid the bolt, alight with orange flame. It whizzed past him and embedded itself into the dead grass on the downward path behind him and briefly caught the dead foliage on fire. Though his knees protested as he rolled on the stone, he jumped up onto his feet, and with a few rapid, elegant flick of his wrists, made the crossbow Hollow into his pincushion. Blood pooled below it as it fell to its knees, then onto its face, with a rasping, wet gurgle.

A Hollow waiting for him to the far left in a crevice shrouded by darkness surged forward at hearing the death throes of its kin. With a determined smirk, Adrian cut its charge short by jamming his thrusting sword into its guts. Staring into its glowing, red eyes, his smirk became a snarl as he pulled the blade out of the Undead before slicing its jugular with the tip. Its body collapsed, with the light in its eyes snuffed out, with a gentle thud and a cloud of dust.

Coughing from the dust, Adrian sheathed his estoc and clipped his staff to his hip. He took this time to not only catch his breath, panting from exertion, but to take more note of his situation. Wiping the beads of sweat from his brow, he lowered the hood of his shirt. He shook his head, the once covered cloud of coffee brown curly hair unfurling from the cloth. From the many pockets in his chest armor he pulls out a small, dull flask filled with blue liquid and covered in crystals, and held it to his forehead. In contrast to the warmth of the estus flask that seemed to glow with the energy of the bonfire, this ashen flask instead felt icy cold to the touch.

Had he not been Undead, he would have desperately needed water, and perhaps a quick, small snack to keep up his energy. He hadn’t felt hunger nor thirst easily in a decade; being Undead took that away entirely. Indeed, as the Vinheimian discovered, the loss of Humanity meant the decay of the sense of taste as well as smell, and still very much being a man of his country, found that reason alone to avoid wastefully dying.

Of course, he still sweated, and still stank, like a normal human did, so he still needed to bathe. But that could come later, after he found the Shrine and Firekeeper that beckoned him.

Scratching at the dark stubble on his prominent chin, Adrian gazed out ahead at the opening in the gateway, noticing the odd circular formation of the area. Like other areas, gravestones and coffins stood out of the ground haphazardly, in part because of the rising Unkindled, and in part due to the moving of the land on its way to convergence. The assassin noted that some of the said sarcophagi and headstones were far too large for normal humans. Had the Lords of Cinders been buried there, and arose there, as well?

Finally, in what he assumed must be the center of that particular section of the cemetery, he squinted to make out a figure down on one of its knees. On its right side Adrian saw a long, ornate iron halberd, its blade embedded in the stone of the shallow set of stairs leading up to it. Given he could ascertain no movement and it wore some sort of armor of dismal gray metal, a shade not unlike the surrounding area, Adrian pondered that the figure could either be a statue or a petrified humanoid. Either way, he would still approach with caution. It appeared placed there with purpose, and between his time as a “Vinheim assassin” and the decade he roamed the lands and wound up in Lothric, he knew better than to go in carelessly.

Keeping his eyes fixated on the figure  and tightly gripping the hilt of his sheathed weapon , Adrian  strode forward, his leather silent in the wind. Curls whipped across his face as he drank in the scenery. Now standing in a pool of water surrounding the platform the figure stood on, the assassin made note of the large set of ornate doors behind the figure. And at this distance, he could very plainly see a twisted and charred bronze hilt sticking out of its chest. An odd, unnatural prominent heat emanated out of the humanoid as he came closer. Then, an odd and subtle slithering, c hurning noise caught his attention.

Strafing to the left, making sure to keep facing whatever the “statue” really was as if expecting it to animate when he wasn’t keeping eye contact, Adrian began to circle around to its back. Once his line of vision crossed over the crouching figure’s back, he found himself stopping in his tracks. He stared, having never seen anything quite like it in his three or so decades of being in various states of existence.

The end of the coiled sword that impaled the figure didn’t cause the concern. Rather, it was the writhing, sludgy, oily mass of black movement. His brain couldn’t really process the identity of this dark moving mass. Tentacles? Snakes? Tendrils? Roots? It sprung out from the blade, as through it were the blood of the “statue” in front of them. It didn’t just look strange in a sea of ashen decay either. Adrian’s face twisted in disgust at the smell invading his barely dulled olfactories. Had it just smelled like rot, perhaps he could have handled it, but it smelled _wrong_. The sludgy mass that somehow suspended itself in the air while looking fairly liquidy had the scent of what Adrian couldn’t describe any better than the scent of pure, unpenetrable darkness, of something primordial that death itself forsook out of fear. 

Swallowing thickly as  the sorcerer actually felt a tiny voice of alarm go off in the back of his head, he slowly backed up towards the locked gateway, keeping his hands on his staff and estoc. If the  _thing_ on the back of what his brain began to slowly recognize as certainly  _not_ just a state so much as began to move in a way it hadn’t before, without a thought he would attempt to strike the  _thing_ down.

W hen his back hit the quite solid doors easily three times as tall as himself, he turned to try to push them open. Much to his disappointment but not to his surprise, they didn’t even budge. They didn’t even make a metallic noise of protest to acknowledge his effort actually moved the doors. They were sealed shut, unmovable by any force, by unyi elding fate. Sliding down with his back to them, he came to sit on the stairs to them and stared at the abomination in front of him, thinking of how to proceed.

Given the walls of the coliseum-like area he stood in were likely sheer cliffs, he couldn’t just climb his way to the other side… assuming something outside wouldn’t prevent him from doing so. Not that he really wanted to go rock climbing; he had a severe fear of heights as a result of his very first death, the one that lead to his untimely exile.

As his racing mind went over solution to solution, he came to the conclusion the only way out of the arena that didn’t involve backtracking would be to interact with the figure before him.  The puzzle, then, consisted of the figure and the sword lodged in its abdomen.

With hesitant steps, the former clandestine scholar made his way down the stone steps, the  whirling  wind of the mountains pulling at his hair and hood.  He took a deep breath to calm his nerves that built up and became louder with every footstep. Heartbeat drumming loudly in his ears, he stood before the figure, ignoring the sounds of the mass on its back, and stared at the b ronze hilt sticking out, no evidence of sanguine in his eyes.

Wrapping his hands on the hilt, Adrian pulled the sword from the “statue,” taken aback by how smooth and easy he found it.  Bight red blood spilled to the ground as the blade sliced through soft flesh once more .  As soon as he freed it fully from the body, the sword vanished into embers. Then, the human before him staggered to the ground  with the joints of its metal armor grinding against each other. Adrian half-expected it to take a gasping breath .  Clearly, it has been “frozen” like that for literal ages.

Then, with a deep growl, _he_ stood on his feet, towering over the tall assassin. At the same time the Iudex pulled the halberd from the ground as easily as one pulls a knife from butter, Adrian unsheathed his estoc and unclipped his staff. It gave him enough time to give the rising warrior a quick jab. Within a matter of seconds, the man clearly guarding this area pulled his right elbow back to lunge at the assassin with his halberd, who rolled out of the way right as it swung through the air, splashing the water where the sorcerer once stood.

For a big guy wearing heavy armor, this Iudex could move remarkably fast.

The assassin found himself dodging again as the Iudex rapidly followed up with another stab of the halberd, whizzing it through the air with dizzying grace and precision.  Regardless of that person’s identity, they wielded the halberd with all the dexterity one requires for the use of a thrusting sword. Facing someone clearly not a brute, the former Vinheim scholar knew he would have quite a thrilling fight on his hands.

Adrenaline coursed through his veins, and the fact the cold water in the arena soaked part of his leathers didn’t even occur to him. Hell, he couldn’t even _really_ feel the coolness of the mountain breeze on his reddened cheeks.

The guardian swung his halberd horizontally overhead, just barely missing the tall assassin as he ducked and surged forward. Adrian had just enough time to get in a few quick piercing stabs through the Iudex’s armor before jumping backwards in the blink of the eye, before the foe could even come to a resting position with the weapon. With a growl, the warrior pulled back his long reaching halberd. Then, he released it in a sweeping, almost circular motion that the assassin, of course, easily rolled through. It left the Iudex wide open as he recovered…

...which Adrian naturally took advantage of. However, he did not anticipate the Iudex turning just enough to elbow the lanky Vinheim right in the jaw. Dazed, he stumbled backwards and wobbled, his eyes barely focusing on the behemoth in front of him as his nose smarted and bled. Instinctively, he brought his left hand up to his nose as he cringed in pain. Adrian grit his teeth together. He managed to avoid falling flat on his arse in the water. Not one to be a sitting duck, he possessed the wisdom to get back to moving as the halberd’s blade just managed to miss him as he strafed to the side.

After the initial shock wore off, the clandestine scholar glowered at the arena’s guardian and judge. While irritated at his bleeding nose, he knew better than to lose his temper in the fight. Instead, he took a deep breath to steady himself as he waved his worn wooden catalyst over his weapon. A gentle, almost chime-like nose could be heard as his weapon began to glow a deep blue as magic temporarily strengthened it. The use of such spell, of course, traced back to his Dragon School education in Vinheim.

Adrian found himself having just enough time to dodge the next set of powerful, consecutive attacks with the halberd. He dodged to the warrior’s right side as he swung the halberd overhead and vertically. Water splashed everywhere as the metal met with stone.

Seeing an opening as the Iudex wrenched his great polearm up, Adrian dove in for an attack. He could feel the blood splatter across his dark armor and his pale skin as he seemed to find a major weak point in the Iudex’s armor, stabbing repeatedly, as hard and as fast as his right wrist would allow. It felt so satisfying to just have gotten that lucky that early.

He had all but forgotten about the wriggling mass on the guardian’s back as it suddenly increased in size. The guardian roared in pain. Like a cancer, it spread across his back until it nearly consumed him. At first, it looked fairly amorphous, but the strange organic slime finally formed into something coherent. It looked a bit look a gigantic, sludgy serpent with two glowing red eyes full of what Adrian would describe as nothing but pure animosity. And out of the left side, a white arm that looked quite similar to the gnarled trees in the location shot out.

The ooze the creature possessing this guardian flung across the arena as the Iudex transmogified. It smelled absolutely repulsive, but the assassin didn’t really have the mind to be revolted when the sight of this pus-like creature shocked him. He hadn’t ever heard of something like that, certainly not a monster that sprouted from men like that.

Its surface still coursed like a river, and much like a snake, it had a long tail coming out the “back” of it. And fully transformed, it almost completely swallowed its still standing host.

“Bloody hell...” he uttered, his eyes large and his mouth hanging open.

To his shame, Adrian stood and stared in terror and awe as the _thing_ hissed shrilly before that large, vegetal hand all but sq uashed him  like dough into the uneven masonry _._ Not even a yelp escaped his mouth as the impact of his body on the stone that jutted out of where it originally lay. Pain made his mind reel, and he found himself having to reign in the urge to panic. Unable to feel his legs but still somehow having sensation in his arms, he snaked out his estus flask and drank deeply before the creature could make him another grave.

With no time to spare, the Unkindled rose to his feet, wounds seen and unseen healed. Now the Iudex took his turn to attack him, somehow able to support all that weight and somehow still being conscious and separate from the entity sprouted from his back. Now more than aware of just how much strength the thing carried behind its swipes,  the assassin dodged towards the warrior and h is enormous parasite rather than to either side.  He took the opportunity to stab the Iudex with his still augmented estoc.

B oth the guardian and the creature  yowled out in both pain and rage. Then, they leaped into the air,  becoming a shadowy mass to black out the sun  before raining down.  Adrian found himself dodging the clearly telegraphed move. Despite that, he didn’t quite foresee the  _thing_ slapped him with enough force to fling him backwards with its tail. It left a pitch-colored trail across his leather armor that stung his nose with its pungency.  Though it definitely injured his back, at least he could stand up without using an estus to heal. 

At least now he figured out that the creature had a hard time hitting him up close, being so large and attached to the top part of the poor sod.  The precision needed for polearms became a weakness when used against a target as swift and cunning as himself, just as long as he kept moving. If he kept getting up close, and dodging to the right whenever the Iudex himself attacked, he theoretically  _should_ be able to best the two of them as long as he didn’t get too  goddamn cocky. 

Or they pulled yet another surprise out of their bag of tricks.

Feigning a lunge, Adrian let the Iudex and creature think he would attack. Once the monster swung its grotesquely large  claws impotently at the space he didn’t inhabit, the assassin d ove in, his thrusting sword radiating magical energy that hummed  at a low resonance, one felt more in the bones than really heard.  Aiming at a new spot between the seams of the Iudex’s armor, Adrian felt the give of the muscles as the tip of his estoc found flesh. 

H e found the necessary dexterity to  slide it out of the puncture, only to jab his sword i nto the Iudex three more successive times.  With blood trailing from his sword, the assassin  jerked to the right, thinking that either the large warrior or the creature would retaliate.

Instead, both the creature and the Iudex went limp. The warrior first fell to his knees, then face-planted into the water, sending water flying in all directions. As his dead body did so, the sludge  fully retracted back into the Iudex’s body, completely disappearing .  Finally, the corpse vanished, fading into whiteness as it became little more than souls to be funneled into Adrian. 

W hen all of the souls belonging to the Iudex found their new place in the Unkindled, a harmless burst of flame engulfed him for a split second. Then, embers rippled across the surface of his equipment without burning it or the owner. Adrian, noticing this, stared at his arms and hands, watching them dance across the damp leather.

“Have I been… _kindled_?” he asked to no one in particular, moving his hands and rotating them as the “fire” responded to his movement. Adrian furrowed his brow in thought. Oddly enough, a strong rush of vitality flowed through his veins, somewhat similar to the sensation of regaining Humanity yet quite different. As far as he knew, Unkindled such as himself couldn’t normally hold onto Humanity the same one normal Undead did, but didn’t normally go Hollow as a result. Perhaps these embers served a similar purpose for them? He would have to ask the Fire Keeper, or someone else in the Firelink Shrine.

With the guardian now relieved of his duty, the former Vinheim scholar, soaking wet, trudged over to the great doors, held his hands out against the metal, and pushed the doors open. Dust spilled onto the stone beneath him as they parted, causing his nose to twitch.  As he stepped out onto the path leading out, he turned to look up at the shrine tall and every bit as wearied as the crematory it stood in. 

_Strange to see something so important just so… neglected_ , Adrian thought, not just about the condition of the Shrine on the outside, but the also of the Cemetery of Ash in general.

Then he recalled something, before he died at the hands of the spirit he fought at the Kiln of the First Flame:  t he Kingdom of Lothric underwent a civil war of sorts, splitting into two factions.  In fact, the civil war itself initially attracted him to the place, as it meant a source of contracts and marks.

If the war had gone on long enough… mayhaps that and the shifting of the lands as more and more time went on without rekindling the First Flame caused the current state of this area. More than likely, Lothric forgot the Shrine entirely  as battles raged on . As a result, if his logic proved correct, the cemetery and Firelink fell into disrepair.

A nd if the Firelink Shrine had been forgotten, in a land obsessed with linking the fire, then what else had transpired?

Shuddering at the thought he truly did live in the end of times, the Unkindled traveled the path upward to the shrine, ignoring the all too familiar blue-robed Hollows along the way. For once, they seemed content to ignore his pretense entirely. He continued to watch them out of the corner of his eye as he made it up the hill, his pace slowing slightly at the slope. 

Finally, he stared into the dark interior of the Shrine, noting that the bonfire did not glow orange with flames. Instead, it stood cold and lifeless. With no fire to light it up, the sun instead cast a feeble amount of light inside, just enough so he could see  the pit of ash below where the bonfire stood  as he stepped inside carefully. 

Looking closer, the bonfire didn’t have a sword in it, either.

As he made his way down the small curved flight of stairs, his boots made a gentle  _ffffft_ as they hit the ash on the floor of the shrine. Beneath his feet, it actually felt a bit like walking on sand.

The glinting of the Fire Keeper’s crown alerted him as she glided from her previous post to him.  Realizing he still had his weapon and catalyst out, he sheathed the estoc and clipped the staff to his side.

In a light and airy youthful voice, she spoke to him.

“Welcome to the bonfire, Unkindled One. I am a Fire Keeper. I tend to the flame, and tend to thee. The Lords have left their thrones, and must be deliver’d to them. To this end, I am at thy side. Produce the coiled sword at the bonfire. The mark of ash will guide thee to the land of Lords. To Lothric, where the homes of the Lords converge.”

Upon remembering the sword he took that seemingly vanished into thin air, Adrian suddenly felt an odd weight at his back, not too heavy but more than enough to notice. With his right hand, he reached around to the object and felt a twisted hilt. Then, he slowly pulled the item out from its previous spot on his back. 

Of course, he pulled out none other than the coiled sword he pulled out of the Iudex earlier. Its bronzed blade glittered in the poor lighting. 

Rather than question it at the moment, he marched forward and sunk the blade into the bonfire. 

With a below, the sword erupted into flame as it found its home. It swathed the inside of the shrine with an orange light, one that e ased the worries of the Undead.

Adrian desired respite, though he didn’t want to sit directly in front of the flame, so he climbed up the stairs to an outcrop on the right of an alcove he could now properly see. When he reached the top of that flight, he simply sat down with a sigh. He spread his legs out, angling his head towards the ceiling, and closed his eyes. While he didn’t quite fall fully asleep, he did enter a fully relaxed state.

As fully relaxed as a former clandestine scholar could be, at the very least. Especially with wet armor and wet hair. It would take _hours_ for his thick curls to finally dry if he didn't eventually sit by the fire. Though, he really should also take a bath at some point....  


The rustling of chainmail behind him stirred the assassin from the wanderings of his mind. He opened both of his brown eyes, with his right hand instinctively sliding over for the handle of his thrusting sword.  A rasping, gravelly,  thoroughly sardonic baritone from the same source as the sound of movement raised the hair on his neck… and admittedly, made his stomach jitter and heart pound.

“Ahh, another one, roused from the sleep of death, I see. A rather tall, furtive looking fellow, too. Not often you see an _assassin_ out in the open, though I suppose the Shrine is a bit shadowy....”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took so long for me to write another chapter. I've been terribly busy between working full time and trying to have some semblance of a social life. Plus, I've been exhausted and up until recently my depression has been kicking my ass. Well, I kicked its ass so.


	3. And in the Dark Appears a Single Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adrian speaks with Hawkwood, Firelink Shrine's resident crestfallen warrior.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Given the line of work I'm in, I may or may not be able to update this one more time before 2020. I'm going to be really busy the next two months.
> 
> Still no beta reader, we die like men. At least I had fun writing it! Sorry if it seems I'm copying a formula from my other fic, sometimes it just feels right to have a chapter of mostly dialogue, yknow?

Adrian craned his head to look up at the stranger standing to his side, looking down at him with folded arms  and hips akimbo. The orange glow of the bonfire appeared to dance across the various circular links on his chainmail helm wrapped around his sharp and l ean featured face. The former assassin drank in the facial features,  or at least the ones he could actually properly see, given the shadows obscured a good portion of his face and body. This stranger stood tall, though not nearly as much  as himself.  Definitely had the appearance of someone who could handle himself well in combat. Between the man’s sullen expression and the way his eyes hung low exactly like the way bags fulled of flour sagged,  burdened by what they carry.

Somehow, the man’s total lack of c heeriness d isarmed him, made him feel completely bare and yet it also didn’t bother him.

All his introspection on the character of this fellow Undead took mere moments, enough it barely registered as a pause before Adrian’s reply.  A small smirk tugged at the outer edges of his thin, chapped lips, and his chest thrummed and rumbled with amusement. His fingers relaxed upon his estoc, then tapped quickly on the sheathed sword.

“Aren’t you the astute one, darling?” He did not lift his head any further as his sable eyes beneath off-black cocked eyebrows burrowed into the warrior’s form. “That you should find me visible should be an infinite blessing. _Clumsy of me_.”

The former clandestine scholar didn’t know quite what to expect from this stranger and still, he spoke the brazen way he did. Men with less experience in the world, and definitely less experience in combat, would have tensed their shoulders, but Adrian’s body remained as relaxed as before. Eagerly, he waited the man’s response.

Perhaps amused by the assassin himself, or  said man’s lack of inhibition, the warrior in leather and chainmail unleashed a brief, rasping laugh.

Sighing as he regained his breath, the yet unnamed Undead trudged to a spot close to the assassin, though not exactly  _beside_ him. He sat with his head lowered, and his wrists resting just slightly above his knees, as to avoid the sharp knee caps. His head tilted just enough to look at Adrian from the corner of his eyes.

“Not chomping at the bit to bring back the Lords of Cinder, are you?” A tinge of bitterness colored his deep voice. “Not that I blame you. Compared to them, we are _nothing_. Couldn’t even die right. And we’re expected to bring them back, like they would willingly set themselves aflame again. It’s all a farce.”

A drian crossed one leg over the other on the step, his hand clasped in his lap.  _He’s exactly as gloomy as I pegged him for_ he mused, the arrogant grin still lighting up his chiseled face. It made him ponder what he must have been through to make him so cynical. 

“Oh? They can bloody well wait. The fire has been fading this long, it can wait for me while I rest. Besides, I’m not here to play hero or savior.” A playful tone haunted his words, though they certainly gave into a sort of resentment. The idea that the Undead must give themselves to the world and save it didn’t sit right with him anymore, true. How he hoped for another way, to shed this wretched Curse….

He used this time to start getting more of a read on this man, silently observing his body language. It dawned on him that something about the man’s armor struck him as awfully familiar, though he just couldn’t put his finger on it. It made his brain itch trying to figure out where precisely he saw such iconic armor before, having traveled across the lands for a solid decade. Yet also, a bell rang in his head that perhaps something bothered about the armor; a detail on the armor just seemed off, and that could very well be the answer.

That acquaintance turned his body more toward Adrian and angled his head to look more directly at him.  As the older man considered a response, the bonfire gently crackled, and the odd fire twirling across the assassin’s gray leathers seemed to follow the same rhythm.

“We all had our reasons and… here we are.” He gestured at the Shrine with his broad hands with a ghost of a sardonic smile creeping across his face. Adrian’s eyes glued themselves to the shining metal gauntlet of the left hand, noting how the plates almost formed claws at the fingertips. 

J ust as the forlorn warrior’s lips opened up again to add, the once proud sorcerer of Vinheim  piped a question, smirk leaving his face. He leaned forward and stroked  his chin, going over his stubble, both against and with the grain, puzzling.

“So, do you _really_ think it so hopeless? You seem rather crestfallen.”

The leather-bound hands moved along with Adrian’s speech, both a trait from his own expressiveness and a tendency Vinheimites commonly possessed.  With both of his eyebrows raised, and how eagerly awaited the reply, it could hardly be said he could be anything other than perfectly genuine. Adrian found himself incredibly curious about this other man’s other motives. 

However, the other Undead squinted at him and frowned even more. His shoulders squared up, and overall, his entire body became even more rigid. The warrior’s pale eyes burned into the Unkindled’s soul as he made his clipped reply. Then, his gaze turned towards the floor, shame washing across his face. The assassin noticed he made a balled up fist with his hands, then released them.

“The Lords of Cinder us lowly Unkindled have been tasked to bring back weren’t even enough to sustain the Flame. What makes you think they still have the strength to keep it kindled?” His voice steadily rose, and suddenly he became animate, though not quite to the extent of the company before him.

“It’s a farce. They were supposed to save the world. _We_ were supposed to save the world. It keeps happening, over and over, Undead throwing themselves at the Flame, hoping to be the last needed to keep it assuaged, hoping to rid ourselves of the shackle of the curse of the Darksign...”

The warrior let out a growl between gritted teeth and nearly bolted upwards. If Adrian’s eyebrows could raise any higher, at this point they’d be off his face.

“It’s all sodding _horseshit_.” 

He spat it out like  crackling  fire, loud enough that the Firekeeper actually jumped and looked in their direction. The expression on her gentle face looked far more startled than offended at his acquaintance's blasphemy of sorts. Even the assassin, in his years of learning how to read people like a sorcerer’s scroll, didn’t quite expect it himself, not that this warrior could be considered an open book. But he could very well glean his demeanor and this rant related.

Adrian cleared his throat, hoping to calm the warrior down to continue with their conversation. Certainly, he found himself  even more curious than before … and admittedly, slightly nervous by the man’s outburst.

“Oh dear, I apologize for bringing up such a sore spot.” The assassin flashed him an amiable lopsided smile. _Well, at least I know he’s passionate about something. That makes him all the more intruiging_ , he thought as he opens up his body posture in order to perhaps disarm the other Undead.

“Just so you know, I once believed that if I threw myself to the fire, if I sacrificed myself, it could at least save Lothric. That I could make up for a lifetime of hands soaked in blood. I see that I was… quite unfortunately mistaken.”

As he thought about his shame, he winced, remembering how it felt to be burned alive, for the First Flame to not just consume his Undead body, but his very soul. He remembered the smoke and stench of his own burning flesh, how it choked his lungs, how it stung his eyes right before they began to melt as he screamed…. The assassin couldn’t help but shudder.

“But as we all know… if the Fire fades, things will fall apart. Quite literally, as I’m sure you can see. I don’t want to strive forward because of some goddamned prophecy that stopped being true cycles ago. I just want a breath of air before the world collapses. That’s all I want. Don’t you?”

Adrian turned his entire body towards the warrior, who looked at him with a quirked eyebrow. The warrior’s eyes circled back and forth, and he pursed his lips. For a moment, he almost looked cross with how much his eyebrows then lowered and how his forehead creased.

He sat back, gazing at the assassin with an expression that slowly relaxed. Then, he released a heavy sigh. “I can’t say I disagree with that, as much as the odds are stacked against it.”

The warrior tilted his head broadly to the side, scrutinizing Adrian as the assassin did to him earlier. Unsmiling, though his tone lightening up, he asked the exile from Vinheim a question.

“And what might I call you, strange assassin?”

Adrian laughed, a boyish grin infectiously taking over his own set of stark facial features.

“ _Well_ ,” he sat with both of his legs perpendicular to the ground and laid his hands on his knees, “My given name is Adrian. If you wanted to be proper, you’d call me Adrian of Vinheim, but I probably don’t have to tell you I don’t really consider myself a man of my own country considering what they do to Undead.”

Blinking, he then followed up with a rather obvious question.

“What about your own? I wish to know more about the man I’m speaking to, given you’ve thoroughly piqued my interest.”

A tense silence follows as the warrior twists his lips, clearly hesitant to let slip even this tiny bit of information. Could he be that ashamed..? Trying to encourage him, Adrian continued to smile at him, though slightly fainter than before,  and inched just a tad closer to him. 

Under his breath, the warrior g ave his answer and averted his gaze.

“...You can call me Hawkwood.”

Adrian patted him on the back, causing him to startle slightly.

“Hawkwood it is, then!”

_Hawkwood. What a unique m_ _oniker_ _. Huh. At least I d_ _on’t have to worry about forgetting it._

Maybe his mind  or the gloomy lighting  played tricks on him, but he swore Hawkwood gave him a small, shy smile as Adrian rested his right h and on the warrior’s left shoulder pauldron.  The grim warrior  definitely did not seem used to the sort of casual touching the assassin found as natural as breathing, though it didn’t seem to make him too uncomfortable; he didn’t inch away, flinch, or bat away the taller and thinner man’s hand.

Definitely a cultural divide.

Tilting his neck and head slightly to look at the slender hand on his armored shoulders, Hawkwood asked Adrian about it.

“Are you so… familiar with everyone you come across?” Out of his mouth, it sounded a bit like a mix between a scoff and a sigh. Though a bit difficult to see, he arched one of his eyebrows.

As he found himself inclined, the assassin released a chuckle, patting the warrior’s back once again.

“Very much so, darling. It’s a trait most of us from Vinheim share, that, and the love of magic and _subterfuge_ , of course.” His dark eyes glittered, full of life and mischief. Gently, he nudged Hawkwood.

I n fact, Adrian hadn’t felt this as ease in… well, more than a decade, at least. Being a former clandestine scholar who attended Dragon School as well as an Undead assassin who scoured the lands, searching for any contract he could find to fill the void tended to make one… tense. Truly, the desire, hells, the  _need_ to kill had changed him. Perhaps irrevocably. 

But right now, that didn’t seem to matter. He felt cheerful. He felt alive. He felt  _human_ . 

Hawkwood snorted, trying quite hard to hide a small grin as he rolled his  eyes with far more effort than necessary.

“Yes, I get it. You’re poking at the stereotype of Vinheimese being untrustworthy.”

The assassin took his hand off the other Unkindled and shrugged his broad shoulders, expression blank. Hawkwood seemed rather serious, stiff and morose, even. Where he hailed from intrigued Adrian even more. No doubt, the way the man’s armor seemed to spark some sort of recognition in his brain, the knowledge would most likely make him feel foolish. 

“...And where might you be from, sir Hawkwood?”

The assassin unconsciously leaned forward, eager to hear the man’s reply.

The warrior, on the other hand, squirmed at the question, awkwardly scratching at the back of his protected neck. Frowning, Hawkwood averted his eyes, and replied with a low, hushed voice.

“Farron.”

_Oh_ . That’s why his armor set off the synapses in his head. The sulking bastard came from none other than the forest the Undead Legion called home. 

_Hawkwood was a member of the Abyss Watchers_ . But weren’t the Unkindled supposed to bring back the Undead Legion...?

I f the warrior had been tense before, he appeared positively on edge now. Out of the corner of his eyes, he stared at Adrian, as if awaiting some sort of judgment, some sort of remark. After all,  _everyone_ had heard tales of the Abyss Watchers of the Undead Legion being positively merciless in their goal of riding the world of any traces of the dreaded Abyss in the name of  their hero, Knight  Artorias. 

While Adrian had never directly dealt with them, he had most certainly seen them around the countrysides, in their pointed ominous hats and their imposing swords. A nation such as Farron didn’t really deal in complex and deadly political intrigue quite like, say, Vinheim or Lothric. He couldn’t recall a single contract originated from the country, though he absolutely heard rumors of an attempt at the Crystal Sage’s life. 

Now that he thought about it, he’d probably literally kill a person to get a hold of some of their combat-based sorceries. They made thorough use of sorcerer knights, not entirely unlike Vinheim, but without the secrecy. Or the Seath veneration.

As if aware of the thoughts swirling around Adrian’s brain, Hawkwood continued to speak.

“The armor _usually_ gives it away.”

“Well, I knew I recognized it from somewhere, I just couldn’t remember the name. I suppose, if anything, what really should have clued me in was the way you carry yourself, full of black humor and as though you just came from a funeral rather than out of a grave.”

The taller Undead turned his head towards Hawkwood, not grinning with his mouth but his eyes twinkled with mirth. 

“If you really think me so glum, you should actually spend time with more from the Legion. A _joyous_ bunch of characters. No, really, I’m _positive_ they would enjoy spending time with a facetious assassin.”

A rather pleased and arrogant smirk spread across the exiled Vinheim sorcerer’s face. They gazed at each other, Hawkwood with pursed lips and low eyebrows  and Adrian  with his brow raised and lips parted in gleeful pride.

“Oh, I think you’re beginning to warm up to my charms.”

Hawkwood’s face scrunched up  only after a brief moment of him blinking, flustered . The assassin’s cheeks began to hurt with how wide and persistent his smile remained. He found himself thoroughly enjoying their banter.

“...Don’t you have some Lords to seek, ‘Ashen One’?”

The lanky Undead then stood up, stretching his arms above his head. His knees and his ankles audibly popped as he did so. Now gazing downwards towards his new acquaintance, the assassin replied.

“Well, I am feeling invigorated by our conversation and I’m rather curious what Lothric must look like now. I bid you farewell for now, Hawkwood.”

His upper half lowered slightly as be began to bow, left arm behind him and folding his right arm in front of him. Still grinning, he strode over to the bonfire, giving the Undead Farron a solemn nod before putting his hand over the handle of the coiled sword buried in the fire and vanishing.


	4. A Hero, Unlikely

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adrian heads to the High Wall, seeking out the path to answers, and encounters Emma in the cathedral.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Biggest oof that I took three, almost four months to post anything new. Part of it is that I have been busy blah blah blah, part of it is that I effectively lost muse for THIS part of the fiction. I fully admit that I've been more jazzed about what I'm currently working on for my Bloodborne fic than this part of the DS3 fic. Unfortunately, it won't write its damn self until I get to the more interesting, angsty, and gay bits! I swear, I have absolutely NOT abandoned this fic. It's just taking way longer than I anticipated to write between well... everything that needs to happen to get to the Good Bits and the whole "I can't keep focus and muse" thing. :(
> 
> I originally intended for this chapter to be ALL of his time on the High Wall but I decided to split it up so I didn't end up not only taking even longer to update, but so I didn't end up with a chapter that was 10k+ words in length.

A stream of pale straw-colored light streamed from a haphazardly boarded up window behind Adrian as he roused from the warping, allowing him to see just enough in the small stone room the Firelink Shrine bonfire sent him to. As he straightened his posture from being a bit curled up, he took note of the cobwebs that hung from all the wooden struts near the ceiling, how thick the dust laid on the cold stone floor, and how tree roots seemed to have grown up the floor, crawling towards the light behind him. Naturally, the Unkindled turned towards the light, away from the reinforced wooden door in front of him, and noticed a long abandoned altar with a broken vessel on it beneath the window.

Though he didn’t _really_ know the significance, he could at least gather it represented the Lordvessel of yore. Not surprising to see such an item, given the Kingdom of Lothric’s obsession with the Linking of the Fire.

Pitiful, really, to see such a room that once held such great significance in such a state of ruin. How long had it been since the wicks of the candles strewn around on the floor burned with flame?

The assassin shook his head, as if to dislodge those intruding thoughts. With his mind returning to his initial desire, to see what Lothric now looked like, he faced the door once behind him and walked forward. Putting his gloved hands up, he began to push up against the doors, noting the amount of resistance they gave him. The entire structure seemed to creak and move and years and years, possibly decades, of dust fell from all the crevices in the cold, stagnant room. Finally, after putting all his weight against the door, they finally began to part as that section of the castle wall groaned.

A cloudy, dirty and pale gold sky greeted him, as well as the main part of the Lothric castle where the two princes must be in hiding. Even from the distance away, he could tell even that part had fallen to disrepair. Clouds of angry black and white smoke dotted his view. Swallowing thickly and dreading what sights and experiences lay ahead of him, Adrian ambled over towards the left where something had destroyed part of the battlements in order to scout the area below. It would be dreadfully foolish not to, especially with the state of the world.

His fingers dug into the stone as he noticed the downed wyvern that had clearly collapsed atop another tower of the highwall, stone and mortar crumbled beneath its immense weight. It failed to stir as a Hollow below clutching a lantern in its right hand trudged out of the opening to the left of it. Something had clearly killed the once magnificent beast that symbolized the kingdom. If the wyverns and their mounts had fallen on the High Wall, he reckoned that things must be even worse at main part of the keep, never mind the lands surrounding Lothric.

The assassin doubted the civil war alone could be responsible for it, especially given the amount of Hollows he could see below, and just the sheer knowledge no one had linked in First Flame in so long.

Things went to absolute shit while he slumbered six feet under as ash regaining its pale power.

Adrian inhaled sharply, desolation, death, and decay thick and pungent in the air, and strode back towards from whence he came. From there, just yards away from the door, he noticed a stairway downwards that had initially almost looked like a drop given the destruction to the battlements around it. Warily toeing down the steps, he unsheathed his estoc and had it ready in case something he couldn’t see around the bends of the High Wall tried to ambush him. The forms of four Hollows rising above the battlements and reaching for the skies, _growing_ out of the earth like trees greeted his eyes as he turned down the stairs.

He noticed more and more of them on the circular platform adorned by makeshift wooden structures assuredly used by knights and soldiers in the conflict that seemed to have happened years ago, just from the state of the ruins, yet also seemed to also have happened just yesterday. _Time’_ _s_ _got a strange sense of humor like that_ , though Adrian. Not far from the foot of the stairs he found a lone bonfire, its flame small but unmistakably orange against bone ash ivory white on broken stone and ground.

Though the Hollow “trees” concerned him, the gnawing need to seek the embers of the bonfire compelled him to kindle it. _Ash seeketh embers_ rung in his head, its significance still yet unknown, still feeling like it meant _more_ than burying Embers of power in his breast to compensate for the weakness of the Unkindled. As he kindled it, sparks of flame flung everywhere like autumn leaves in the breeze and an orange haze briefly settled over a circumference around him. For a moment, just for a moment, he sat at it with crossed legs and a sheathed estoc, watching the fire twitch and pulsate like a beating heart.

After feeling reinvigorated, Adrian stood up to stretch as the fire inherited from his earlier triumphant battle flitted across his dark leather armor that stood out so well in a jungle of stone brick. He began to hear the eerie wailing and screeching of Hollows below. They might not remember who they were, but their rasping voices from dry, withered vocal chords sounded _scared_ and pleading. Without a second thought, the former clandestine sorcerer pulled out his catalyst. Once he applied a silencing spell to his being so well memorized it might as well be etched into his very soul, he crept up to the hole in the wall, weapon in hand.

As he neared the broken part of the battlement, a Hollow soldier stood up from a platform previously unseen. With its back to Adrian, it would be a shame to not take the opportunity to plunge his estoc into a gap in the tarnished armor it wore. Sucking in a breath, the assassin slunk forward, careful to watch for even the smallest movement to indicate the Hollow would turn. His boots soundlessly glided over an uneven makeshift wooden floor on his way to the foe. He felt the resistance in the frail body of the hollowed out Undead as his estoc thrust into it. It made nary a sound as blood oozed out from both sides of the wound, its lungs punctured and rendered totally useless for producing noise.

He slowly lowered the Hollow’s body onto the wooden platform to avoid a loud _plunk_ if it fell onto the wood, or worse, fall down into the area below.

Just as he lowered the corpse of the Undead soldier, Adrian’s eyes locked onto the sight of a dog that appeared little more than mangy fur draped over a skeleton. Briefly, he froze, his body so taut he thought it threatened to snap like a rope pulled far too tight. The creature lowered the front half of its body, then unleashed an impossible bark, alerting both the patrolling soldier Hollow below and the ones in robes on the sides that appeared to be either worshiping or pleading to Hollow trees that began to cower.

 _Here we go_ he thought to himself, releasing a sigh as not one, but two dogs began to barrel forward, disappearing behind a corner that likely led up to the platform he stood on. He turned around so that when they arrived, he could at least avoid them attacking his backside. Moments later, he could hear the patter of claws and bare bone clattering on stone. The lanky exiled sorcerer had just enough time to apply a trusty shimmering and phosphorescent blue spell to imbue his estoc with magical energy to compensate for the fact these foes didn’t have soft, squishy, vulnerable flesh to pierce into.

While the first dog lunged for him, he forced his glowing blade into where the meat of the dog’s body should have been. As though it still had nerves to feel with, it flinched as his blow sent it flying away from him. Remembering he saw not one, but two of them, Adrian quickly sidestepped and looked up as the other dog leaped at his right arm, missing and ending up plunking on the makeshift wooden outpost. The thrill and stress of combat coursed through his cursed veins. He gave one of his canine foes, at least the one guessed as the first one, a confident stab as it approached him from the side. It fell limp in front of the other that snarled liplessly at the assassin. Zero hesitation took him as he used his blade to slash across its rib cage, the glowing magic of the weapon trailing as it hit the creature. As it died and its relatively weak soul funneled his way into him, he recalled that he spotted patrolling soldiers that certainly must have heard the dogs.

Though he knew it would barely matter in terms of spotting him, he hunkered down a little bit as he crept back onto the main part of that tower, still gripping his estoc just loose enough as to not cramp his wrist. He crouched down, heading left as he heard the heavy, lumbering footsteps of what could only be one of the near-mindless soldiers below. The metal of its sparse armor clanked noisily on a body now too shriveled for it to fit properly. As the being came up the steps and neared the corner, Adrian swore he could hear its strained, heavy breath.

The assassin brought his entire right arm back, preparing for a hit on the foe. As soon as he saw the faded blue shawl around its neck and its milky bald head around the corner of the stairs and peaking out the battlements, he gave it a good poke in its exposed midsection. The weakened far-gone Undead practically crumpled on itself as the blade punctured its gaunt body, barely able to grunt as it collapsed on the stairs. Its heavy axe clunked handle first down them until it finally tumbled to the foot. Though no more far-gone Undead came for him that he could see peaking around the shoulder, he wouldn’t so soon relax into a less combat ready stance.

The afternoon light shifted around as the constant cloud cover moved, but never quite left. As he cautiously traveled down the stairs, he noted he could take one of two paths from there: either go straight forward to another watchtower segment, or down a brief set of stairs to another area. In the distance, he could certainly hear all manner of commotions, from the pitiful mewling of hapless Undead to frenzied soldiers and knights whose mind had long since rotted and now could only think of battle and blood. And the stench in the air overwhelmed him… from burning stone and wood, to burning flesh, to all manner of organic and inorganic decomposition. Even though he had laid his feet through this area dozens, hundreds of times, nothing looked the way it should. The High Wall, once a welcoming friend, now felt like a hostile stranger staring him down in the shadows of a tavern.

If he remembered correctly, the path downwards to a small tower with an elevator. And that elevator led to a plaza of sorts where the Lothric cathedral sat, guarding the way to the castle. If anyone sane remained to help him on his quest, certainly he could find them in the chapel. If his memory served right, and not too many years had passed, the High Priestess Emma could still be found there.

With no further delay, the assassin ducked down the stairs right about the time he saw the head of a Hollow through the gaps in the battlements in the tower ahead. Despite his haste, he did so as quietly as he could manage by using the balls of his feet, thankfully aided by the fact his leather boots made little sound. On his way down, he noticed a lit lantern next to sitting Undead soldier, its paper thin eyelids closed and its chest rising every so often and falling.

 _I could let them lie… actually, come to think about it, it would be far, far better for me to simply slit their throat before they rose from their slumber_.

As a grim, snarl-like shell of a grin split apart his chiseled face, the assassin skillfully and slowly sheathed his estoc, not letting it so much as scrape on its way in. Then, with the same cautious, careful movements, he pulled out a dagger from his belt. Like a great heron in a river waiting to strike a fish, Adrian hunkered down, though not a full crouch, with slow and deliberate strides. He watched every movement, every little sleep twitch of the Hollow, ready to stab the soldier if he work it. Careful to not cast a shadow over it, he went to the side, and finally put the blade against its throat. In one clean motion, he slit its throat, watching its dull eyes fly open. Its mouth opened in wordless panic as near-black blood gushed from the wound.

Soon after, he felt less “empty” than before, its soul adding to his power.

After feeling satisfied with its lack of further movements or signs of life in its eyes, Adrian wiped the arterial blood off his dagger with a cloth obtained from the pouches on the belt. Sheathing it and trading it for his large blade again, he stood up fully. He felt multiple joints pop, a rude reminder that he would forever be in his early forties, no longer a young man but not quite old either. “Mature,” as some would say. As he tiptoed up to the iron cage door to the elevator, he snorted thinking about that. His contemporaries at Vinheim Dragon School would hardly call him a “mature adult.”

The door rattled uselessly as he attempted to noting it. Locked, then. No matter, he carried tools precisely to deal with things like this; any assassin worth their weight in gold always kept a set of lock pick with them. He knelt down to get his eyes level with the actual lock to get a good idea of which to use. Giving a quick look over his shoulder and seeing nothing approaching him, Adrian pulled out a lock pick he thought fit and a torsion wrench. He clenched his teeth, put his ear against the iron door, and inserted the tools.

Eventually, the memory muscle from what felt like the thousands of times he did those very motions returned, though initially he struggled. Once he heard an audible _click_ , a grin light up his blood-smudged face. Stuffing his tools back in his pouch and securing it, Adrian stood up and gently pushed the door open. He stepped inside the rather tiny, dimly lit room, eyes scouring over the gears and pulleys on the elevator. Did they still work? Dust coated everything on the inside, and plenty of cobwebs lined the corners of the room and ceiling. It certainly smelled musty on top of everything else.

The assassin held in a bit of a breath as he stepped onto the platform. As it began moving downwards without a hitch, Adrian let out the breath he had been holding in a faint sigh. The elevator clanked and squeaked as it reached the bottom. On the contrary, he expected it to be swarming with soldiers and knights alike. And most definitely, he would have to put up a real fight. Even mindless Hollows could be dangerous, but a hollowed out knight who couldn’t remember name, home, or family could still, somehow, remember their training.

Through the doorless aperture, he could see autumn leaves littering the ground, broken stone everywhere, sprouts of grass, and ivy overgrowing stone rails. Even more grim, from the aperture that led into a breezeway, he could most certainly see the bodies of crumpled over long since dead decapitated knights, curiously all wearing faded red and gold capes. Old blood that once soaked the garb turned much of it a dark reddish brown. Perhaps even more curious, he didn’t see any heads on the ground.

Though he couldn’t hear a sentinel patrolling the grounds, he still knew to be on alert. In its prime, Lothric bustled with people from all over the lands, and of course, that meant a plethora of knights and other such guards that roamed the grounds to keep the peace and protect the citizens as much as the royal family. Hell, closer to the time he went to attempt to Link the First Flame, the security got even tighter as tensions began to mount, not just because of the apparently impending civil war, but also due to the fact the maddened king, Oceiros, left the palace and didn’t return.

Adrian furtively peaked his head out from the archway, carefully leaning himself so as to not expose the majority of his body, made a little more interesting given his height. Panning his head left and right, he noticed a Hollow soldier with a lantern on its side holding a sword, ambling around. On the far left, the assassin also noted he saw an even scrawnier, weaker looking one sans armor just.. hanging off the edge of the rail. Probably waiting to ambush an unsuspecting enemy. And if he saw one… he could bet on there being other hidden adversaries around.

If it wouldn’t most certainly given away his position, the former clandestine scholar would sigh, but instead he rolled his eyes and waited for the one serving as bait to just turn around so at the very least he could surprise one of the bastards rather than walk into a situation where literally everyone but him had the advantage. _Thought I suppose I also have the advantage of knowing there’s an ambush_ , he mused, pursing his lips together in determination.

Right as the decoy turned its shriveled, partly exposed back, Adrian leaped into action. With only a few long strides of his legs, the assassin closed the distance far too fast for it to process before jabbing the estoc into its exposed vertebra. Right as the diversion dropped onto the ground, bleeding and yowling like a gutted cat, the assassin danced over to the hanging Hollow before it had the chance to pull itself up to attack. One decisive slice at its exposed bony fingers and it fell to its death, flailing and eking out a strained and weak scream all the way down to oblivion.

With little pause or second thought, he turned to face a pack of four Hollows wearing billowy, weathered robes pulling themselves up, leaping onto the railing, and surging towards him with broken straight swords. Something like unlike hate filled their eyes. Perhaps it would be better to compare it to the intelligent yet not quite fully human malice of a clever wolf, unable to care about or ponder higher concepts like morality. But now was neither the time nor place as he cut through the four Hollows in a flick of the wrist, slicing across them all and jabbing the one that didn’t fell immediately.

Adrian took a moment to catch his breath, his heart beating hard and fast from the flash and dazzle of close combat. He hunched over slightly after sheathing his estoc and rested his hands on his knees. The heatless ember that fueled his power slithered across his spindly form, creating glowing orange, red, and yellow patterns that quickly morphed into something new. Though the souls entering him certainly gave him strength, it paled in comparison to the Ember claimed from the Iudex. It would be something to get used to, just like he got “used to” being Undead, but _never_ dying. Dying despite coming back remained a terrible and terrifying experience, most especially after dying and staying down for so long.

No one told him that he could _fail_ to Link the First Flame by being too weak and fizzling out to weak ash, the Humanity burned from his soul. The Unkindled, at the time he made his attempt, existed only as tales of caution from previous Cycles. But he supposed the few remaining Divines (and of course, their devoted flock of sheep), their power crumbling, just threw any old Undead that could make it to the Kiln at the problem in hopes it would just resolve itself.

He hadn’t wanted to burn himself alive because of some ancient prophecy about the Undead but he felt bitter about it nonetheless. If Adrian could find some alternative to the world going down a drawn out spiral of endless suffering, he would to the greatest extent of his power. Surely, with the way the world currently shat its own pants, he could reveal some long coveted secret, some rhyme or reason behind it all that didn’t boil down to “This is the way it ends” in a never ending cycle of Light and Dark, of Fire and Ash.

Finally, the former clandestine scholar caught his breath in his contemplation not at all uncharacteristic of his previous profession. He stood up board straight and tall, taking the time to stretch enough that he felt his shoulder and ankles crackle and snap. Even the Undead could pull muscles, dislocate joints, and sprain limbs. Among other grim things, such as maiming, frostbite, even decapitation (which, he heard, Undead could sometimes survive)….

 _Might as well use some spells. The plaza is going to be overrun, if what I’ve seen is any indication_ Adrian thought as he pulled his staff from its place on his belt. After waving it over his entire being, from head to his boots, he jogged to the end of the breezeway to another archway. Already, he could hear the clanking plate armor of knights on their patrol around the plaza, still bound to their sworn duty as everything around them crumbled.

Ivy growing on both sides of the breezeway rustled drily against the hood his mane of unruly curly hair, his tall figure a vicious shadow between the stone arches. He didn’t have to take that many strides before reaching a set of stairs going down, the angle such he couldn’t quite see what lay at the foot. Rather than simply rush down the stairs, fully knowing that he could hear activity below, he practically tip-toed down it gingerly. With the chilly autumn breeze kicking up, he could certainly feel the beaded sweat on his brow between all the physical exertion and the nervous uncertainty at the situation on the High Wall.

As he made his way down, one step at a time whilst vigilantly both listening and watching for foes, Adrian spotted the shriveled feet of a shuffling Hollow. Rather than stop, his steps remained lighter than a duck’s downy as he burst forth. _I know if I can see the bastard, the bastard can see me,_ he thought as he clenched his teeth and readied his estoc that so faithfully served him in the last decade or so of banishment. To no surprise, the Hollow caught on. In ad hoc chainmail armor, the soldier surged up the stairs to be greeted with the long tip of the thrusting sword aimed at its throat.

As the flash of combat led him down the stairs, an alerted soldier grasping a lit lantern followed the noise and movement. This time, he found himself disadvantaged. But despite being caught off guard by the swinging of a weathered sword, he raised his estoc to block it with its edge. As the swords connected, they scraped against one another and sung metallic notes that warped and vibrated, growing in pitch as Adrian pushed his weight against the blade. Being heavier and stronger than the Hollow, it knocked it back, almost sending it careening off its bony feet.

With an opening that fortuitous, a sinister, bloodthirsty sneer couldn’t help but the lips of the lanky assassin as he leaped forward to deliver a blade through the Hollow. As the near-black and unnaturally thick sanguine oozed from the wound, Adrian abruptly pulled it out, face alight with ghoulishly glee. The Hollow fell to the ground on its side, letting out a last labored grating gasp as its soul fled its feeble body. Dry leaves crumpled up beneath it.

From there, he gazed down at the plaza upon the bushes turning from green to orange. The wind brought him more falling and already fallen leaves. With at least a little time to breath, Adrian sheathed his estoc with loving care in order to observe the scene below.

At the eastern end, down stairs, he could see multiple Undead soldiers defending a massive gate. Though multiple combatants might prove a challenge, they paled in comparison to the gauntlet of Lothric knights patrolling above them, closer to the cathedral, marching in perfect sync. As one turned their back away from the looming building, the other looked towards it, ensuring no interlopers could access it. Though difficult to tell from the distance, their different stances told them they wielded incredibly different weapons. Interestingly, crimson colored their tabards and capes, like the beheaded ones he saw before. He still didn’t quite know what that detail meant yet beyond possibly giving a hint towards factions that developed in his overly long absence from the land.

Adrian needed a plan in order to get to the cathedral. Though ordinarily confident, he found himself wary of getting into combat with not one but two knights at once, especially ones in plate armor and carrying shields. The estoc might be designed to get into the gaps of the armor but knights had the advantage of extensive martial arts training. In comparison, Adrian’s training generally encouraged him to avoid direct combat, especially with heavily armored opponents carrying shields, and used a combination of magic, cunning, and knowledge of how armor worked. Not impossible, but required discretion.

And, of course, it bared repeating _two_ of them patrolled the area just before the cathedral.

Squatting down and furrowing his brow in contemplation, he scanned the horizon of his vision. If memory served correct, he should see a side path to the right that let up to a ledge, then down again to the cathedral. While a knight would most certainly be stationed there to get an advantageous view below, it _should_ be less of a pain to deal with. If he took that path and used stealth to take out the knight, he would be able to sneak past the sentinels and weasel his way inside the Cathedral of the Blue.

Would the priestess still be there? Who would he find, cloistered inside, hiding from the discord outside?

Slowly, he stood up, his eyes on the two knights in the area just before the cathedral. He waited for them to start wandering back towards the center and trade off before casting his movement silencing spell over himself, focusing on his armor and boots. Then, he took off down the steps with his blood thrumming loudly in his ears. Just as the very top of the helm of one of the knights appeared over the steps up to the cathedral, Adrian made it to the stairs on the other side. Breath heavy but completely inaudible, he slunk his way up the stairs.

Luck seemed to be going his way. Just as he made it to the top, the lone knight pivoted their back to the assassin, oblivious to his ominous presence. With more than enough time left on his spell, Adrian glided over to the knight while unsheathing his estoc. Warm brown eyes focused on the subtle gap that formed between pieces on the chest that the swaying cape kept revealing.

And so, he jammed the blade in, feeling resistance as it met withered flesh, and pressure as it pushed through into muscle. Then, using his left leg, he kicked the knight off, the armor clanking as its bearer hit the ground. As the knight stood up, it shook just a tiny bit, likely rattled from both the blow and the fall. It didn’t surprise him too much the knight seemed far sturdier than the Hollows he had encountered earlier. Rather than wait for them to turn and attack, the assassin aimed the very point of his blade at the gap between the helm and the chest, spraying blood and causing them to finally collapse with a low, haunting groan.

After a quick wipe down of his estoc, the furtive Unkindled put the weapon up on his hip. Hopefully, he wouldn’t be needing it inside the chapter. He reapplied his silencing spell just to be sure he wouldn’t be discovered through sound. As for sight… well, he couldn’t help his height, and would try to close the relatively small distance as swiftly as he could.

As he made it to the large wooden doors of the cathedral, he finally noticed what appeared to be dead, hollowed and hump-backed pilgrims at the sides. He cocked his head in baffled curiosity. He knew little about them beyond the inference they likely hailed from the cursed and despised Londor. But why were they here…?

Regardless, Adrian shoved the doors of the cathedral open as he shook the thought from his head. It didn’t matter at the moment. As the doors creaked, he took note of the dark wooden interior, lit by sparse candles, with an impressively high ceiling. They closed behind him, somehow quieter than when he opened them. A red rug, not unlike the red worn by the knights, led him to a seat occupied by a blue robed form.

Upon seeing what he assumed must be Emma, the priestess, he took down his hood and let his thick, shoulder-length hair fall, allowing her to actually see his features. Adrian did so out of respect and as a gesture of goodwill, give his armor quite clearly marked him as an assassin. With a short gait, minding that he stood inside a religious building, he began his approach.

“Pardon the attire, Your Holiness,” he chuckled modestly, bowing to her, “But I have just arisen from the deep sleep of death. Surely you can forgive an Unkindled for wearing the armor bestowed upon him and worn when he failed to properly link the First Flame?”

The priestess gave him a small, amiable but weary smile.

“That I can. The wait for you has been gravely long, Unkindled One. I am Emma, the High Priestess of Lothric Castle. Allow me to speak frankly.”

Her smile faded, and she looked him so directly in the eye it sent shivers down his spine.

“You will not find the Lords of Cinder here. They have left, gone. To their churning homes, converging at the base of this castle. Head to the bottom of the High Wall. Forge on through the great gate.”

From the side of her chair, she reached for a small banner leaning against it, grasping it gently. She then held it out to him. Gratefully, he took it from her and strapped it to his back.

“But beware. The dog keeps a close eye on things, the vile Watchdog of the Boreal Valley. But before you go… I have a farewell gift.”

In her hand she procured a tiny bit of pale blue sheepskin with a strange filigree crescent moon embroidered upon it.

“It is the insignia of an old covenant. If you fear trespassers, dark spirits drawn by your embers, then etch this on your heart, and the old concord will beckon noble Blue Sentinels to hunt these foul spirits.”

Delicately, from her hand he took the badge. Again, he bowed out of deep respect, quite aware of the social expectations of one of her class. Assassins had to know the ins and outs of royal and holy social structures in order to do well, after all, both to even receive marks as well as to carry them out. And as a social butterfly, they came to him quite easily as second nature.

It gave him a distinct advantage over some of the more socially awkward and naive clandestine scholars who came upon the Dragon School, also unable to afford to attend without effectively signing away their life as a professional killer.

“Thank you for your counsel, Your Holiness. It is most appreciated.” He grinned lopsidedly, pleasantly highlighting both his high, prominent cheekbones as well as his distinct and strong jawline. His brown eyes twinkled with geniality hardly feigned.

Emma smiled back up at him, far more restrained.

“You are most certainly welcome. Go now, Unkindled One. Your time is now, and Prince Lothric’s soul must be saved.”

And with that, Adrian took his leave, lines forming on his brow as his mind went over each of her words.

If she expected a glorious, noble, and selfless savior, she would be thoroughly disappointed. The expectation he would save them all weighed down on his shoulders. As he pushed through the doors, out into the late afternoon sunlight that slowly turned more and more orange, he let out a great, burdened sigh.


	5. A Rat in the Hole

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adrian procrastinates on his task to bring back the Lords of Cinder by exploring the High Wall a little bit more. Content warning for gore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've decided since I have such sporadic muse for my DS3 fic currently I'm going to change to updating whenever instead of holding my Bloodborne fic behind trying to update this. I'm not abandoning it, I'm not putting it on hiatus, it's just the Bloodborne fic, for a while, will likely be updated far more often. Sorry for anyone who is enjoying this! It's just taking me way longer to find my steam.
> 
> As per usual, this hasn't been beta read. Sorry if my proof reading is terrible, I just wanted to post this before it hit the three months between updates mark!

Burning curiosity fueled his desire to see more of what became of what once served as the militarized line between the kingdom of Lothric and the rest of the land. Rather than immediately jump onto the task of defeating the man that lay between him and the Undead Settlement and thus the so-called Lords of Cinder, he headed back whence he came, avoiding the knights far easier this time now that he knew their patrol path. The deep orange glow of late afternoon fading slowly into evening as the sun crept down the horizon lit his way as he flitted across the plaza. Once he made it to the stairs that eventually lead the way back to the higher points on the Wall, he took a moment to catch his breath.

It would be dark soon, which he found both a blessing and a curse. With his dark leather, he would become but a strange, phantasmal shadow… on the other hand, it would make it more difficult to see those that would seek to eliminate him in turn. A trade off for sure, but Adrian could manage. Adrian always managed. The night provided wonderful cover for his deathly deviousness and his murderous motives, and the soft aqua moon soothed all the hidden wounds on his sullied soul.

As he leaned against the arch of the breezeway leading back to the elevator, he sat and listening to the background noise. He could definitely hear the faint crackling of fires burning, and indeed, he could smell the almost pleasant smell of wood burning, coupled terribly with the acridness of burning human flesh. And the chorus of clanking metal, heavy boots on the store, paired with this cacophony. It would grow ever closer to the assassin, then fade away once he became convinced the source would come his way.

With the spark of intrigue lighting the proverbial fire under his ass, the Unkindled, with faint, heatless embers still flickering across his impressively tall and lean figure from time to time, decided to investigate the source of the noise, hiding behind a large stone arch. He just barely craned around the edge, his left cheekbone and hand flush against the cold, hard wall. Inside the enclosed area, he could see a small courtyard littered with the bodies of headless knights strewn across it in various positions. Torn banners rose up from stakes in the ground like a grim field of fabric flowers flapping limply in the wind. Smoke billowed around the area, partially obscuring some of it, and rising towards the sky.

But his eyes naturally drifted towards the undeniable presence of a large knight in a blue scabbard with curved armor that made it look incredibly, comically stout… or at least, it would be if they weren’t carrying a proportionally large halberd in both hands. They marched a circle around the fountain, clutching the polearm, as if patrolling the area looking for any of its scarlet-caped mortal enemies to decapitate. As the sentry turned their back, Adrian noticed they an odd feature on the back: though he couldn’t quite tell if it was part of the armor or not, but from the back sprouted diminutive white feathery “wings.” They flapped with every thudding, ponderous movement of the monstrous armored foe. And how loud, indeed, the armor and those footsteps sounded on the stone! The two of them threatened to rattle the wine-stained teeth in his skull.

Adrian hid behind the wall again, gritting together his jaws as he began to think of a plan to completely avoid the knight haunting that particular part of the decaying battlements. The smoke would provide an excellent cover. And with all the clanking of metal from the plate armor deafening his ears, he would hardly need to use any spell to avoid being heard. The real trouble laid in whether or not his escape, an opening largely obscured by smoke, would prove to be a trap. He _did_ see a balcony that he could climb up onto to get inside one of the surrounding barracks, but for one, he wasn’t sure he could climb it in time, and two, heights scared him shitless ever since his first death.

The Unkindled could either hide behind the stone all day ‘til the moon rose and darkness blanketed the High Wall, or he could zip around the fountain and towards the single easy exit that he knew he could escape to before probable death via beheading.

As soon as the lumbering knight made a stalking lap around the broken fountain, their soot-stained blue cape trailing behind them, the assassin made a break for it as fast as his long legs could carry him. Heart drumming in his ears and smoke stinging his nostrils, Adrian bounded towards the opening, not so much as turning his head to see if he caught the line of sight of the knight. He honestly didn’t want to see them coming. The seconds it took to make it from the pillar concealing him to the opening seemed to go on for ages as he pounded his boots against the stone.

Once he finally emerged out the other side of the smoke towards a balcony with corpses, Adrian, over his panting breath, listening to the noises behind him. The stomping continued, but it had neither changed frequency nor volume to indicate being pursued. While catching his breath once more, he took the time to absorb the scenery in front of him. Red-brown stains on the stone of long dried blood. More dead bodies. Beheaded red knights. Broken swords. Torn banners bearing the Lothric symbol, a gold wyvern. On the right side, a single impaled blue knight, the same proportions as the one he just ran past.

But he wouldn’t have been a great clandestine scholar if he couldn’t look closer. Hidden amongst all the bodies, he saw a glowing lantern, and beside it, a sitting Hollow soldier that hadn’t quite noticed him yet. Further behind _that_ , he could see hanging Hollows off the railing on both sides of the soldier . _The locals seem to_ really _like using that stratagem_ , he mused, almost chuckling to himself with how quaint he found it. With a wry, lopsided grin on his face, the exile in leather drew his estoc, ducking down as he readied a precise strike, knowing of the pincer attack before him.

Much like the previous trap he found himself in, Adrian approached it by slicing the very tip of his estoc across the neck of the sitting lookout, watching what little blood remained in the withered soldier spray onto the stone. When this alerted the less armored Hollows awaiting to get to him first and they started to pull themselves up, he similarly flicked the tip of his sword across one of their wrists and watch them disappear, their increasingly distant cracking scream letting him know they actually fell down. The next he merely kicked off the ledge, doing his best to avoid looking over the edge and getting dizzy from vertigo. That gave him just enough time to dodge the impending lunge forward form the third Hollow, holding the hilt of a broken straight sword.

With a sneer on his face, he hit them hard with his elbow. Then, he twirled in place as he sent them forward and plunged the estoc straight through its back. Dark red soaked the faded blue robe they wore as it fell onto its belly, letting out a singular feeble cry before their soul fled from their body, adding to the strength of the embered Unkindled who felled them. Each soul being sucked into his vessel felt like the highest of adrenaline and endorphin rushes to be only rivaled by the sensation of regaining Humanity after it being lost for so long, or the sweet carnal release of sexual frustration built over the course of busy weeks of no real human physical contact save daggers through bodies.

Truly, he found it like old times, when he roamed the lands listlessly, cutting down bandits and other opportunists that learned the unfortunate way that Adrian knew how to defend himself.

Wiping the blood off his face and his blade, the former clandestine scholar took another moment to look at his surroundings. To his new right as he craned his head upwards and squinted, he noticed a ladder lead upwards to a stone brick balcony overseeing what he suspected would be soldier barracks. The balcony itself looked to be quite far up just looking on from down below, something that certainly didn’t thrill the assassin at all. And at this angle, he couldn’t get a good view of anything actually on it. Well, he could stand there forever ‘til everything fell into the sea, or he could reel in his nerves and actually climb up towards where he wanted to be. Approaching the ladder with a long, deep breath as he reassured himself he would be absolutely fine as long as he didn’t look down, the Unkindled grabbed onto a rung with both of his hands, put the heels of his boot on another below it, and began his climb.

With his eyes firmly set on everything above him, he mentally kept reassuring himself he wouldn’t fall off the ladder. That the ladder wouldn’t break and fall beneath him, sending him plummeting down, down, down. As he pushed himself up each rung, and as he got closer to the wooden rail of the balcony, the progress slowed down, the clanking of his boots on the ladder a reminder of how they weren’t on terra firma. It became harder to ignore just how _far_ Adrian must be off the ground as a cold autumn wind sent him shivering and teeth clattering on the metal ladder, clinging for dear life.

“Seath’s bloody scaleless taint,” he cursed under his breath, a mere whisper due to his lack of knowledge about the presence of Hollows or anyone or anything else above him. He froze, finding himself breaking into a sweat and his heart racing. _Why did it always have to be bloody heights?!?!_ Adrian closed his eyes, trying to stop himself from hyperventilating. Conscious of his own breathing, he took a deep breath in while his head began to feel floaty and light. After a few seconds, he released it, and repeated the process a couple times.

Once he felt more centered, the exiled clandestine scholar pulled himself up a few more rungs, this time picking up his pace. If he did it quick, but not so much as to be careless, he wouldn’t have to think about it any longer.

Finally, he made it to the last few feet of the long ladder, thanking the last of the gods and even some of the dead and forgotten ones for not falling to a painful, slow death of breaking every vertebra in his body. Right when he could pull himself up, he heard an almost wheezing, rattling breath. Carefully bringing his head up, just enough to see, he put his eyes level with the torso of a frail Hollow wearing chainmail and a helmet with a light crossbow in their bony clutches. Adrian then quickly ducked down on the ladder, sucking in a breath.

He really didn’t want to try to latch onto the railing, shuffle around precariously with trying to use the gaps between stone bricks to rest his legs on, and try to get behind the Hollow in order to take them out. Not after what he _just_ endured. He would rather, quite literally, have a crossbow bolt shot into the meat of his arse than try to actually use his once fantastic skills to scale builds with nothing but his own hands and feet. Not after his humiliating first death brought on by hubris and gravity that he couldn’t get out of his head no matter how hard he tried.

Oh well. Bolt to the buttocks it would be.

Gritting his teeth, Adrian pulled himself up and over the railing in a swift and fluid motion, wasting very little in terms of precious time and energy, almost flying over the edge as he managed to land on his feet like a cat. Pulling out his estoc quickly as the Hollow began to react, pulling back the lathe and grabbing for a bolt, the Ashen assassin simply pulled back one of his long legs. Right as the soldier loaded a bolt but before they could squeeze the trigger, Adrian gave the Hollow a solid kick in the abdomen.

Their back hit the wooden crate behind them card. With a sadistic grin ear to ear lighting up his face half-hidden by shadow, Adrian jabbed the end of his estoc into the gap between the chainmail armor and the greaves. Right as the blood as dark as night began to flood from the wound as it no doubt punctured the soldier’s guts, the exile from Vinheim had the victory cut short by a quite sudden almost burning sensation of a blade puncturing through his leather and into the flesh right below his left shoulder blade. Yowling, the assassin wrenched his blade out of the pillow of flesh it had slid into and flung blood all over the balcony.

He turned to face the source. Another Hollow, this one less protected than the last. “I suppose I ought to give it to you that you snuck up on me, an asssassin by trade. Well done!,” he chuckled at the mad Undead, baring his teeth in a violent non-smile.

Still sneering toothily, he grabbed the Undead’s wrist with his left hand, both catching them off guard and bringing them closer. He felt the wretched soul struggle to no avail in his grasp, dwarfed by the spindly Vinheim exile. Certainly, a risky maneuver that left him vulnerable, but the Hollow didn’t exactly strike him as particularly bright or especially aware. Lean muscle built up the body of the deceptively strong and lanky Undead, and he could defend himself quite well in hand to hand combat even before his country threw him out on his ass. Any clandestine scholar worth their weight in gold could defend themselves without their spells and even without weapons.

He spent hundreds of hours training. Sure, he clearly slipped up here and there, but Adrian wasn’t helpless. Especially not after being left to rot by the Dragon School and Vinheim for having the nerve to die in a less than graceful and dignified way and come back.

“Too bad you just missed my lungs. Pathetic,” he spat out before plunging his blade at an angle, aimed from below the sternum and diagonally upwards. At this point, it was practically a ritual, his ability to hit organs so ingrained into him through hours and hours of anatomy lessons and combat practice. The Hollow didn’t even make a noise but it certainly widened their red but shriveled eyes and opened their rotten mouth as they were robbed of their breath. As he removed it and allowed the sanguine to flow and pool, the adversary dropped like a sack of potatoes, mouth agape in horror.

His back still smarted, but he’d been through worse. Puncture wounds at least had a tendency to self-seal. He could definitely feel blood sticking to the leather, and wouldn’t that just be lovely to peel off from his skin later. Nothing a swig of estus or a sit at a bonfire couldn’t heal. In that way, at least the Undead were blessed rather than cursed. Sure, seeing your reflection in the water every day and realizing you aren’t aging _did_ weird one out after awhile, but there were _perks_.

At least he didn’t have to worry about taking a shit and accidentally using the leaves of an irritating and highly poisonous ivy to wipe oneself out in the wilderness. The Undead didn’t get hungry or thirsty, and didn’t have bowel movements or need to void one’s bladder. Something about their state exempted them from a lot of normally essential biological processes. But, he couldn’t quite tell you why he didn’t need to excrete when voluntarily eating, or after drinking estus. That remained a mystery to himself, but he suspected it had something to do with the Darksign itself.

Now that he could actually get a decent look at his surroundings without worrying about a stray Hollow trying to shred and stab him to bits, Adrian noticed how the windows and doors of the barracks directly in front of him were either broken, barred by wood, or both. To his left, there was another building with a missing door and a wood ladder off to the side to the angled roof, and he could peer directly inside the somewhat dark interior. Inside, a few thin shadows shuffled around, though further away and just almost out of view. But every so often, in the reflection of the windows inside, he could just barely see a red Lothric knight march through the building on sentry that would disappear down a dark hole he assumed must be a flight of stairs. And despite the recent bit of combat right on this balcony, they didn’t seem to notice or care about it. Rather than risk finding out if they would wander his way or even poking his head in to see what else lay in surprise for him, he made a dash for the ladder, remembering how the High Wall spread itself quite laterally, the entrance to the main parts of the castle at the bottom most point, with the barracks as well as the dungeons at the highest points.

His boots made the ad hoc, rickety wooden plank bridge creak. He felt his stomach clench, as if in anticipation of it giving in beneath him, but it did no such thing. Adrian made it across the tiny bridge without so much as wobbling as it gently swayed beneath him. At least _this_ ladder didn’t take him up the equivalent of multiple stories of a building. He crawled up onto the blue shingled roof, boots clattering on the shingles as he stood up. Once he got his footing, his eyes immediately focused on the Hollows on a higher section of the roof before him, congregated around trees growing out of other, still Hollows. The figures on the trees, themselves, looked as though they were reaching out to the sky, as if requesting rescue or respite from gods that would never come.

But he didn’t care about a group of Undead who had lost so much Humanity they resembled little more than lurching strips of jerky with two glowing red pinpricks for eyes. Rather, he focused on the flat platform above and beyond them, with yet another ladder leading up to more of the High Wall. Even from the suboptimal angle from being below it and so far away, he could see part of a gargantuan, gray-beige felled wyvern, its stony, scaly hindquarters and wings sticking out in the air. He could also see the top of a cylindrical tower, looming over the area before him. The crying, weeping, wailing noises of the nearby Hollows prevented him from listening too much to what may lie in the distance, beyond the occasional gust of wind. Smoke, rot, and desperation still filled his nose and lungs, between how it just stuck to nostrils and his clothing like burrs.

At least he couldn’t smell his own nervous sweat beneath his leathers from when he climbed up to the barracks. Or any of his body odor from movement at all. As cool as the air felt on his face, it mattered not when one began to fight, the adrenaline began to pump, and the blood began to flow.

A soldier appeared up above where the body of the wyvern laid, and began to clamber down the ladder, almost _sliding_ down the short way to ascend and descend. Had they, perhaps, seen the assassin, who most certainly stood out like a sore thumb on the pale rooftops? Not like it mattered. Not like Adrian cared. He hardly did this under the auspice of the Dragon School, with the expectation he would use primarily stealth and avoid detection all together. With his estoc readied, the assassin changed his ambling pace to a confident gait, not quite running but not exactly leisurely, either.

When he tread close to the group of the perhaps religious Hollows, the soldier almost perfectly in front of him, in turn, began to increase their own pace to close the distance between the two.

But a strange, ear-piercing shriek caught the Unkindled off guard, making him leap a little as he passed by the group. If it weren’t for the fact he didn’t want to get stabbed again by another Hollow, he would have turned his head to properly see the commotion going on beside him as he dashed up the angled roof further upwards. One of the Hollows began a violent transformation, a black, sludge and serpent like entity sprouting from their back, just like the Iudex, just on a smaller scale. This scarlet-eyed being, seemingly independent from the Hollow, began to lash out at the surrounding Hollows, snapping its pitch jaws at them. It ate _holes_ through them, and they didn’t bother fighting back as they died.

Adrian witnessed some of this out of the corner of his eyes, but didn’t so much as slow down or turn his head to look at it dead on. The transformed Hollow seemed weighed down by the beast, ambling at a fairly slow rate. As long as he kept moving, the _thing_ wouldn’t catch up to him, or so he hoped. Now darting to avoid the mutated Undead, the assassin didn’t so much as slow down or stop as he finally met the Undead soldier, strafing slightly to their left as he swiped horizontally with his thrusting sword. While not as effective as a stab or even a swipe by a straight sword, it gave him enough time to ascend the ladder to get away from the shuffling Hollow with the oily snake-like monstrosity writhing out of their back, thrumming and growling.

As the soldier followed him up the ladder, he gave the bastard a solid kick to the head as he pulled himself up to the platform with the dead wyvern nearby. Once on top, he turned to face the foe, taking out his trust staff in his left hand. He brought it back behind him, focusing all his attention and will on the staff. His eyes narrowed at the target, and his eyebrows furrowed around the bridge of his nose. Once the Hollow had reached the peak of the ladder, he swung the staff, and it became a large, glowing greatsword made of pure magical energy, whizzing effortlessly through the air towards the Hollow. It cut straight through their torso like butter, smelling not of burnt flesh but of singeing ozone.

With a smirk and a nod, Adrian watched in satisfaction as its body separated neatly in half with a squelch, entrails trailing out and dark, thick blood pouring from both ends of the wound. Withered Undead were almost as dry on the inside as they were on the outside, and yet it somehow managed to be worse than looking at the visceral of a healthy, fully human… human with how the blood had congealed and the organs, turned unhealthy colors better suited for stones, shriveled up on themselves. Not to mention the smell… “uniquely repulsive,” while pithy, didn’t suffice to fully encapsulate just how unpleasant it could be. Putrid and earthy, almost like a tree in a forest so rotted it had turned to organic slime, prefaced by the heavy scent of iron and meat gone off.

Macabre to be sure, how he found himself fascinated and disgusted by the messiness of death. Perhaps as a twisted result of becoming a professional killer, Adrian viewed death, even as temporary as it was for Undead, as being oddly artistic, beautiful in the right light, even. Each body a canvas, the blood the paint, and his blade the brush of choice. Each of the contracts he carried out he committed to memory, each leaving a dark, sinful stain on his once innocent and pure soul. Now more than ever, he found his art evolving out of necessity, moving further and further into killing out of sheer necessity. But he never lost his touch, even after being entombed for years after his body had been slowly, yet painfully fully consumed as fuel.

It was a world he no longer truly knew the rules to and he had to adapt, lest be forced to his knees.

He wandered past the distraught Hollows that seemed to be mourning and worshiping the corpse of the wyvern towards the entrance to the tower. They really did seem cling to anything that might grant them reprieve, but the assassin really couldn’t blame them after just barely scratching the surface of what Lothric, let alone the rest of the world, had undergone. While he pondered this, he opened the iron bar that squeaked on its hinges as it swung open into the gloomy interior of what he felt fairly confident about being one of the towers that contained a small jail.

Back when he wandered the castle of Lothric, he remembered while they certainly had dungeons for the more dangerous types, thieves from the Undead Settlement constituted the largest problem. They came up with a “solution” to inter them temporarily in the jails, put strange hoods on them that denounced them as thieves, and occasionally forced them into slavery in order to “repay” their crimes.

If he weren’t in a dark room where his eyes had to adjust and he had to be more cautious than usual, he would have cringed at his own thought. Lothric had been good to him because of political unrest… not so much to others. And it likely just go worse when King Oceiros lost the very last of his marbles and disappeared with the youngest prince to never be seen again…

Shaking himself out of thought, the assassin clutched his estoc close to his body as his eyes adjusted to the dim, depressing dark. He made sure to take small, gentle, calculated steps as to avoid creaking the planks beneath him, a surprisingly difficult task when it felt they would give beneath him. Once his eyes adjusted, he could see the disarray inside, all the random barrels and crates and even chairs and tables littered around the room, including directly in front of him. He couldn’t tell if someone deliberately set it up so intruders who weren’t careful would stumble into it and alert anyone on watch, or it was just a happy coincidence created by the chaos. After all, he reminded himself, even “mindless” Hollows could tap into their human cleverness, as clearly demonstrated by the slit in the back of his leather armor from a blade he didn’t see coming.

After scanning the floor with his eyes, he noticed the feeble light of a lantern running out of fuel to his right behind some barrels. With his height, he didn’t even need to stand on the tip of his toes to see the top rungs on a descending metal ladder. He also took note of the holes in the floor, as well as a spiral wooden staircase upwards. On the top floor, he could see light streaming through a window as well as through an aperture. Given the tiny flame of curiosity buried in his chest, the Unkindled decided he would follow the path down instead.

At the corner of his eyes, he noticed some strange movement in the grayness of the room. Rather than quickly turn his head and give away his location, he slowly hunkered down, crouching as much as he could, as he heard the faintest sound of bare feet plod on the wooden floor. Carefully ducking behind a crate, he furtively peaked over to see the source.

Not one, but two Hollows draped in hooded dilapidated clothing wielding daggers took exploratory footsteps in the room, as if they had seen his intrusion but weren’t sure of his location or if he still resided within the tower. Unlike the movements of many of the other Undead, they moved swiftly, gracefully, even, but even a doddering Hollow could have surprising, and lethal, flurries. He could take them out, with enough finesse… but he could just as easily sneak past the both of them. It would be just like old times, avoiding detection and using discretion when it came to kills. Then again, they’d pose a problem on the way back up….

The duo didn’t seem to patrol the room proper, but they did separate as they stalked across the room looking for him. Up above him, he heard the clanking of metal boots on the floor, and the planks groan under them in protest. Almost holding his breath as he alternatively watched the circling Undead and listened, Adrian waited to see if the Lothric Knight above him would start to descend the stairs. He crouched, perfectly still, his heart beating in his chest. All the while, as one of the Hollows searched the back of the room, the other skittered closer and closer as the two of them did their sweep. He would have to make a decision soon, because he could only do so much hiding from two people alerted to his presence in a mostly open room.

To his relief, the thudding footsteps up above him stopped, then turned on their heels, and began to head back the way of their origin. The Undead rogue, however, slunk their way closer to stand to the side of the group of crates he hid behind, their head craning left before slowly turning right. With little time left, the assassin took no more chances as the Hollow ambled his way and simply poked the estoc through the gaunt Undead’s chest. Rather than risk their toppling over as they died alerting the other, he fortuitously caught the Hollow in his arms like a mother catches her child. Carefully, he lowered the bleeding body to the ground, dragged it behind the cover, and once more peaked over his hiding spot.

The Hollow, with its back once turned towards him, spun around, their head darting in search of their companion. From their skeletal mouth, he heard a wordless sound of alarm as they must have realized the other Hollow had all but disappeared. Adrian, laying await for the unsuspecting rogue to come his way, smirked lopsidedly beneath his hood as blood dripped from his hidden thrusting sword. With little light in the room, the sanguine beneath the Hollow he felled appeared almost pure black, bereft of the hues that made it distinguishable as blood. Not much longer now as they ambled over after examining the other corners of the room….

This one walked up to the front of his cover, driven by process of elimination. The assassin crouched, still, once more, waiting for the perfect moment. The hooded Undead rogue hadn’t looked over the crates yet, but he knew they would soon. A look to the left, a look to the right. If the Hollow still had eyelids, they would have probably blinked. The former clandestine sorcerer watched as those eyes, as inhuman as they were, lit up with recognition as they face him. They readied their dagger, clutching it with purpose and angling it above their shoulder. But they had naught for time to bring it down on Adrian as he rouse and flicked his wrist, bringing his blade into the Hollow’s eye and through their fragile skull.

The light, far too dark, didn’t allow him to distinguish the blood from anything else that got scrambled as he pulled it out, hearing metal scrape against bone. Though designed for thrusting and not slicing, it would still need to be sharpened after he got back from the first step in what he knew would amount to an extraordinary and crushing amount of tasks.

Softly grunting his pleasure of the execution of the entire set of events, the assassin carefully stood up, knowing other denizens most certainly lurked in this tower. The ever present, occasional foot steps above certainly did not relent in reminding him of that. After wiping off the estoc so the blood would not rust it, he sheathed it once more, doing so with a smooth yet slow and steady enough of a motion it didn’t even make much of a noise. If he _really_ wished to do so, he could easily use the spell to conceal any aural evidence of his presence. But, at the moment, he could tell he had precious magical focus left enough to do so.

He could function well enough without any sorcery.

Toeing around the corpses of the Hollows who would most certainly return at some point as their souls coalesced in the last bonfire they called home, Adrian made his way towards the downwards ladder. With the lantern beside him, he would have to be careful not to cast a shadow below and give himself away to any guard that might lurk down there. He peaked over the edge of the jagged, asymmetrical hole. The floor below couldn’t have been that much more than he was tall, enough to require a ladder but not enough to invoke injury. Or his fear, for that matter. He also saw more dusty crates, coils of rope, dying lanterns languishing in the dark, the occasional mysterious linen cloth. His eyes scanned back and forth what he could see, before he finally caught a glimpse of another ragged Hollow, lugging around a halberd, with linen clothing hanging off their scrawny body with no hair except a few odd tufts on their head.

With a grin lustful for violence only extending on the right side of his face, the assassin pulled out one of his daggers from his belt instead, waiting for the perfect moment and waiting for confirmation they were the only one trudging about below. After all, he preferred to avoid death at (nearly) all costs.

Several minutes passed by as he crouched above, eyeing down the hole. He laid as still as a stone as the knight above continued their patrol, every so often entering the tower with their metal-encased feet drumming on the moaning planks. By then, he could reliably predict how long it would take for the knight to return, even without a clock to time it. He just counted the seconds in his head, one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand….

Eventually, the former clandestine sorcerer found himself granted not only a tower free of the clattering footsteps of the Lothric knight, but the Hollow unaware below him who seemed to have stopped in middle of their little patrol. Creasing his brow, the assassin made the drop, one hand clutching the dagger as he collided with the smaller, frailer body. It flattened the Hollow onto the floor with a thud, causing them to let out a short-lived, croak of surprise. He felt the blade push into the Undead’s neck, and he made a horizontal slice through weakened muscles and tendons that felt more like slicing through damp linen than fresh meat with the way it tore and the resistance behind it. As he felt the life below him ebb away and the souls become apart of him, he stood up and watched the blood pool beneath the corpse.

With a bit of fine blood spray across his face and his leather attire, the assassin rose silently from his downed target. Then he took a pause to check for any sudden noises in the door before heading forward, down a better lit section of the jail, with far more stone than the previous sections. Both crates and barrels blocked most of his view down the way, with squinting and trying to duck around doing little to see from afar. Regardless of the lack of activity after the previous altercation, Adrian didn’t feel completely at ease yet. Step after step, he walked down the narrow hallway to the wooden door on the other side, fairly sure a small cell lay behind it. He inched around the crates, the light becoming brighter and brighter.

He heard the firebomb whizz through the air long before he saw the Hollow that threw it and had just enough time to leap to the side to avoid most of it. The firebomb hit the ground with an ear-splitting shatter and a violent, loud bloom of vermillion flame.

“Are you bloody serious right now?!” he barked as he felt the heat radiate from its impact, his uneven eyebrows creased and lowered about as far as they would go down. Crates and barrels shattered loudly and caught fire. The smoke filled his nostrils. And, of course, being in a small room, despite avoiding most of it, he still found himself subject to it; a section of his armor singed and scalded the flesh painfully beneath it. Though it didn’t catch him on fire, thankfully, Adrian _definitely_ felt himself scathed by it, enough that he let out a yell of distress. But he would have to ignore the burn, at least for now.

He’d probably be washing the smell of burnt leather out of his hair for a few days. Sitting at a bonfire didn’t exactly _clean_ the Undead.

Soot and ash now covering part of his body, the assassin rushed, dagger readied, towards the Hollow as they pulled out another firebomb from a sack hanging from a makeshift rope belt on their hips.

Adrian, seeing this, hissed at the Hollow in his thick southern Vinheim accent, “Oh fuck off to the smoldering depths of Lost Izalith you poor, mad, hollowed bastard.”

Though he had the dagger plunged through the foe’s chest before it could hit the ground, the Hollow lobbed the firebomb where Adrian once stood before launching himself at them. This time, the inertia of him leaping forward at least kept him out of harm’s way as he heard the ceramic stridently shatter into a million pieces and the fire boom. The heat rolled off him as he pulled himself up, looking left and right in the room as he turned towards the small cracking flames consuming the remnants of what once cluttered the room. The smoke left him coughing and waving his arms to wave away the smoke.

Behind the door, he heard a faint voice, though couldn’t properly distinguish any words. Extending a palm and laying it flat on the wooden doors, he gently opened them up. Yet another hallway, leading downwards. Hugging the walls, he ambled down, until he reached a circular room with a barred jail door. To his right, he could see a table with some dust and cobwebbed covered bowls, a tankard, and a copper mug with sludge on the bottom.

Adrian let out a sigh of relief when the only resident of the room turned out to be a rather small looking person in the left corner in one of those strange hoods in a cell, the side with the holes cut out for eyes facing him. Meager candles lit the dank room that smelled of rotten wood and mold.

Then the person in the cell scuttled forward, clinging to the bars of the cell.

“Hello? You have your wits about you, yes?” a soft tenor with a nasal timbre asked, the hat bobbing as the person spoke. A tinge of fear colored their voice.

Pleasantly surprised, the assassin cleared his throat and answered in his baritone with a wry smile “I am more than pleased to tell you I have a couple marbles left before I finally go Hollow, yes.” He chuckled warmly as he wandered closer to the cell. Once in front of the door, he knelt down, pressing his lips firmly together and furrowing his brow as he rummaged for his lockpicking set. Who knows how long they had been locked up in here, neglected by the wardens and time. Surely they must be Undead, as well, given they hadn’t died of starvation or dehydration. It wouldn’t be right to let this person sit here for all eternity as the world crumbled around them.

He didn’t really care if this person had done more than steal to end up thrown into a jail. Any threat this thief might present was dwarfed by his own, clearly marked as an assassin by his sinister attire.

As he carefully angled his tools and began to test the tumblers inside the door with his lockpick and torsion wrench, in order to break the tension, Adrian remarked, briefly leaning over to look at the thief, “The name’s Adrian, by the way. Don’t really care what you did, you’re getting out of here.”

The thief stared at him for a few moments before exclaiming, “Oh! Thank you. Heh heh.” They fidgeted their fingers for a moment and took a deep breath.

“I’m Greirat, of the Undead Settlement,” he continued breathily, watching Adrian press the wrench up and grin as he heard a distinct _click_ , “Say… that glow… and the bell… you must be some of that unkindled ash.”

Standing and brushing his knees off, Adrian raised his right eyebrow at the diminutive thief. With a tilt of his head, he asked as he angled his head towards the left, “Yes, why do you ask?”

Greirat let out a small titter. “Well… could you do a small favor for me… Adrian?”

The assassin shuffled to the left and swung the cell door open with the slightest of gestures, it barely squeaking on its rusty joints.

“I don’t see why not,” he shrugged his shoulders, eyebrow still quirked in piqued interest.

“You know where the Undead Settlement is?” Adrian nodded vigorously to the question Greirat asked, “Well, there’s this- there’s this old woman, Loretta. Could you please give her this ring? I’m not- I’m not asking for much. But, if you do this for me, I will- I will be sure to repay you in kind.”

The thief angled his head upwards and the hood’s tail dangled from his small neck. It made Adrian keenly aware of just how comically tall he stood in comparison to this other Undead. He pulled out a ring, and offered it to the much taller man.

A boyish and small, but enthusiastic smile lit up the former clandestine sorcerer’s face. With a delicate touch, the assassin took the ring, noting the blue tearstone on top.

“Certainly, Greirat. Allies are few and far between here,” he cheerily replied, casting his gaze towards the thief again with his smile still genuine and lingering. _I should give him a bone so he doesn’t have to crawl his way to the Shrine_ , he thought, then began to rife through his belt pounches.

It didn’t take him long to find a singular bone shard, still glowing with a residual ember not unlike his own. Squatting again so they could be level with one another, he offered it to Greirat.

“Use this so you can head back to Firelink Shrine. It’s safe there, I promise.” The sorcerer widened his grin, showing even more of his admittedly slightly crooked, slightly wine stained teeth. With zero hesitation, the thief gently clasped his hand around it and took it from him.

“Thank you, again, heh. For now, I’m putting my faith in you to deliver the ring,” Greirat squeaked before he gently squeezed the bone like one would pick up a small kitten, vanishing in an orange swirl and smoke.

For a moment, Adrian stared at where he disappeared, an odd, giddy feeling filling his chest. He looked at the ring once more, recognizing that the enchantment on these types of rings offered protection to the weak. Not overwhelmingly powerful, but enough to offer some respite in desperate times. _He must care a lot about this Loretta. Who knows how hard it was for him to obtain. They definitely didn’t capture him for the ring if it’s still on him_ , he mused.

Slipping it into his pouch for safe keeping, Adrian headed out of the small jail and on upwards. He had a Lothric Knight to possibly take care of just in this tower, and one Outrider Knight to vanquish on his way to the Undead Settlement.


End file.
